Dante subsumed everything, and so, in a sense, secularized nothing.

At our present bad moment, we need above all to recover our sense of literary individuality and of poetic autonomy.

Samuel Johnson said Alexander Pope's translation of the Iliad, "tuned the English tongue.

One reads for oneself and for strangers.

Originality must compound with inheritance.

The aesthetic and the agonistic are one, according to the ancient Greeks.

The inventor knows HOW to borrow.

Persuasion is a strong but subdued outrider.

King die hard, in Shakespeare and in life.

Shakespeare's exquisite imagining belies our total inability to live in the present moment.

Reviewing bad books is bad for the character – WH Auden

Every man has a starting capital in life and it is called worth or self-worth.

Destiny calls, desirable chosen.

Worse than any severe mental illness, is the illness of bigotry.

I never loved anyone else and never desired to. She was my companion, my lover, and my teacher.

I'm so grateful for what Disney gave me and the experiences that I got, but at the end of the day, I can do so much more than what I did on that channel and in those movies.

Part of the challenge of Most Wanted is trying to become the most notorious street racer on the pavement.

I am a Liberal, yet I am a Liberal tempered by experience, reflexion, and renouncement, and I am, above all, a believer in culture.

I know people are going to be suspicious about everyone now. I know I don't have anything to hide. I've never done anything. It's just a shame it's gotten to this point.

Sometimes, in my published complaints about not being a writer, I have recalled the prospect - the yearning to be a writer - as it first formed for me.

Sometimes I would bring some of my music to the school and perform on the playground, and they'd think, "There goes Patrick, trying to entertain everyone as usual."